The Origin of the Family, Private Property and

the State
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the
Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (German: Der The Origin of the Family,
Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an Private Property and the
1884 historical materialist treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is State
partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book
Ancient Society (1877). The book is an early anthropological work
and is regarded as one of the first major works on family
economics.

Contents
Publication history
Background
Writing process
Editions
Content
Development of human society and the family
Family and property
Footnotes First edition (1884)

External links Author Friedrich Engels

Original title Der Ursprung der
Familie, des
Publication history Privateigenthums
und des Staats
Language German
Background
Publication 1884
Following the death of his friend and co-thinker Karl Marx in date
1883, Friedrich Engels served as his literary executor, actively Published in 1902
organizing and preparing for publication of the various writings of English
his scholarly friend. This activity, while time consuming, did not
fully occupy Engels's available hours, however, and he managed to persevere reading and writing on topics
of his own.

While his 1883 manuscript Dialectics of Nature faltered, remaining uncompleted and unpublished, a greater
success was achieved in the spring of 1884 with the writing and publication in Zurich of Der Ursprung der
Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats: Im Anschluss an Lewis H. Morgan's Forschungen (The
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan).
Writing of The Origin of the Family began early in April 1884, with the project completed on 26 May.[1]
Engels began his work on the subject after reading Marx's handwritten synopsis of a book by pioneering
anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from
Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization, first published in London in 1877.[2] Engels believed it clear
that Marx had intended upon a critical book-length treatment of the ideas first broached by Morgan and
determined to produce such a manuscript as a means of fulfilling a literary behest of his late comrade.[2]

Engels was unflinching in acknowledging his motives, noting in the preface to the first edition that "Marx
had reserved to himself the privilege of displaying the results of Morgan's investigations in connection with
his own materialist conception of history", as the latter had "in a manner discovered anew" in America the
theory originated by Marx decades before.[3]

Writing process

Engels's first inclination was to seek publication in Germany despite passage of the first of the Anti-
Socialist Laws by the government of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. On April 26, 1884 Engels wrote a
letter to his close political associate Karl Kautsky in which he noted that he sought to "play a trick on
Bismarck" by writing something "that he would be positively unable to ban".[4] He felt this goal
unrealizable owing to Morgan's discussions of the nature of monogamy and the relationship between
private ownership of property and class struggle, however, these making it "absolutely impossible to couch
in such a way as to comply with the Anti-Socialist Law".[5]

Engels viewed Morgan's findings as providing a "factual basis we have hitherto lacked" for a prehistory of
contemporary class struggle.[5] He believed that it would be an important supplement to the theory of
historical materialism for Morgan's ideas to be "thoroughly worked on, properly weighed up, and presented
as a coherent whole".[5] This was to be the political intent behind his Origin of the Family project.

Work on the book was completed—with the exception of revisions upon the final chapter—on May 22,
1884, when the manuscript was dispatched to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich.[6] The final decision of whether
to print the book in Stuttgart "under a false style", hiding Engels's forbidden name, or immediately without
alteration in a Swiss edition, was deferred by Engels to Bernstein.[6] The latter course of action was chosen,
with the book finding print early in October.[2]

His first objective was to claim that matriarchy was based on promiscuity as proved by Bachofen, who
actually said it was based on monogamy.

Editions

The first edition of Der Ursprung der Familie appeared in Zurich in October 1884, with the possibility of
German publication forestalled by Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law.[2] Two subsequent German editions,
each following the first Zurich edition exactly, were published in Stuttgart in 1886 and 1889.[2]

The book was translated into a number of European languages and published during the decade of the
1880s, including Polish, Romanian, Italian, Danish, and Serbian.[2]

Changes to the text were made by Engels for a fourth German language edition, published in 1891, with an
effort made to incorporate contemporary findings in the fields of anthropology and ethnography into the
work.[2]
 The first English language edition did not appear until 1902,[2] when
Charles H. Kerr commissioned Ernest Untermann to produce a
translation for the "Standard Socialist Series" of popularly priced
pocket editions produced by his Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago.
The work was extensively reprinted throughout the 20th and into the
21st Centuries and is regarded as one of Engels' seminal works.[2]

Cover of the 1st English-language

edition, published by Charles H.
Kerr & Co. of Chicago in 1902.

Content

Development of human society and the family

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State begins with an extensive discussion of Ancient
Society which describes the major stages of human development as commonly understood in Engels's time.
It is argued that the first domestic institution in human history was the matrilineal clan. Engels here follows
Lewis H. Morgan's thesis as outlined in his major book, Ancient Society. Morgan was a pioneering
American anthropologist and business lawyer who championed the land rights of Native Americans and
became adopted as an honorary member of the Seneca Iroquois tribe. Traditionally, the Iroquois had lived
in communal longhouses based on matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence, an arrangement giving
women much solidarity and power. Writing shortly after Marx’s death, Engels stressed the theoretical
significance of Morgan’s highlighting of the matrilineal clan:

The rediscovery of the original mother-right gens as the stage preliminary to the father-right
gens of the civilized peoples has the same significance for the history of primitive society as
Darwin’s theory of evolution has for biology, and Marx’s theory of surplus value for political
economy.

— Engels, Friedrich (1884). "Preface to the Fourth Edition". The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State. New York: Pathfinder Press. pp. 27–38, the quotation is on
p.36.

Primitive communism, according to both Morgan and Engels, was based in the matrilineal clan where
women lived with their classificatory sisters – applying the principle that "my sister’s child is my child".
Because they lived and worked together, women in these communal households felt strong bonds of
solidarity with one another, enabling them when necessary to take action against uncooperative males.
Engels cites this passage from a letter to Morgan written by a missionary who had lived for many years
among the Seneca Iroquois,

As to their family system, when occupying the old long-houses, it is probable that some one
clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans; and
sometimes, for a novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave
enough to leave their mothers. Usually, the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless
clannish enough about it. The stores were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or
lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children, or
whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pack up his
blanket and budge; and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to
disobey. The house would be too hot for him; and, unless saved by the intercession of some
aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan; or, as was often done, go and start a new
matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans, as
everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns", as it
was technically called, from the head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the
warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with them.

— Morgan, Lewis H. (1877). Ancient Society. London: Macmillan. p. 455.

According to Morgan, the rise of alienable property disempowered women by triggering a switch to
patrilocal residence and patrilineal descent:

It thus reversed the position of the wife and mother in the household; she was of a different
gens from her children, as well as her husband; and under monogamy was now isolated from
her gentile kindred, living in the separate and exclusive house of her husband. Her new
condition tended to subvert and destroy that power and influence which descent in the female
line and the joint-tenement houses had created.

— Morgan, Lewis H. (1881). Houses and house-life of the American Aborigines. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press. p. 128.

Engels added political impact to all this, describing the "overthrow of mother right" as "the world-historic
defeat of the female sex"; he attributed this defeat to the onset of farming and pastoralism. In reaction, most
twentieth-century social anthropologists considered the theory of matrilineal priority untenable,[7][8] though
feminist scholars of the 1970s-1980s (particularly socialist and radical feminists) attempted to revive it with
limited success.[9] In recent years, evolutionary biologists, geneticists and palaeoanthropologists have been
reassessing the issues, many citing genetic and other evidence that early human kinship may have been
matrilineal after all.[10][11][12][13]

Engels emphasizes the importance of social relations of power and control over material resources rather
than supposed psychological deficiencies of "primitive" people. In the eyes of both Morgan and Engels,
terms such as "savagery" and "barbarism" were respectful and honorific, not negative. Engels summarises
Morgan's three main stages as follows:

1. Savagery – the period in which man's appropriation of products in their natural state
predominates; the products of human art are chiefly instruments which assist this
appropriation.
2. Barbarism – the period during which man learns to breed domestic animals and to practice
agriculture, and acquires methods of increasing the supply of natural products by human
 activity.
3. Civilization – the period in which man learns a more
advanced application of work to the products of nature, the
period of industry proper and of art.

In the following chapter on family, Engels tries to connect the

transition into these stages with a change in the way that family is
defined and the rules by which it is governed. Much of this is still
taken from Morgan, although Engels begins to intersperse his own
ideas on the role of family into the text. Morgan acknowledges four
stages in the family.

The consanguine family is the first stage of the family and as such a
primary indicator of our superior nature in comparison with animals.
In this state marriage groups are separated according to generations.
The husband and wife relationship is immediately and communally Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–
assumed between the male and female members of one generation. 1881), whose pioneering
The only taboo is a sexual relationship between two generations (i.e. anthropological study of Native
father and daughter, grandmother and grandson). American peoples was adapted
by Frederick Engels in The Origin
The punaluan family, the second stage, extends the incest taboo to of the Family.
include sexual intercourse between siblings, including all cousins of
the same generation. This prevents most incestuous relationships. The
separation of the patriarchal and matriarchal lines divided a family into gentes. Interbreeding was forbidden
within gens (anthropology), although first cousins from separate gentes could still breed.

In the pairing family, the first indications of pairing are found in families where the husband has one
primary wife. Inbreeding is practically eradicated by the prevention of a marriage between two family
members who were even just remotely related, while relationships also start to approach monogamy.
Property and economics begin to play a larger part in the family, as a pairing family had responsibility for
the ownership of specific goods and property. Polygamy is still common amongst men, but no longer
amongst women since their fidelity would ensure the child’s legitimacy. Women have a superior role in the
family as keepers of the household and guardians of legitimacy. The pairing family is the form characteristic
of the lower stages of barbarism. However, at this point, when the man died his inheritance was still given
to his gens, rather than to his offspring. Engels refers to this economic advantage for men coupled with the
woman's lack of rights to lay claim to possessions for herself or her children (who became hers after a
separation) as the overthrow of mother-right which was "the world historical defeat of the female sex". For
Engels, ownership of property created the first significant division between men and women in which the
woman was inferior.

On the monogamous family, Engels writes:

It develops from the pairing family, as we have already shown, during the time of transition
from the middle to the higher stage of barbarism. Its final victory is one of the signs of
beginning civilization. It is founded on male supremacy for the pronounced purpose of
breeding children of indisputable paternal lineage. The latter is required, because these children
shall later on inherit the fortune of their father. The monogamous family is distinguished from
the pairing family by the far greater durability of wedlock, which can no longer be dissolved at
the pleasure of either party. As a rule, it is only the man who can still dissolve it and cast off his
wife.
 — Engels, Friedrich (1884). "Preface to the Fourth Edition". The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State. New York: Pathfinder Press. p. 75.

Family and property

Engels's ideas on the role of property in the creation of the modern family and as such modern civilization
begin to become more transparent in the latter part of Chapter 2 as he begins to elaborate on the question of
the monogamous relationship and the freedom to enter into (or refuse) such a relationship. Bourgeois law
dictates the rules for relationships and inheritances. As such, two partners, even when their marriage is not
arranged, will always have the preservation of inheritance in mind and as such will never be entirely free to
choose their partner. Engels argues that a relationship based on property rights and forced monogamy will
only lead to the proliferation of immorality and prostitution.

The only class, according to Engels, which is free from these restraints of property, and as a result from the
danger of moral decay, is the proletariat, as they lack the monetary means that are the basis of (as well as
threat to) the bourgeois marriage. Monogamy is therefore guaranteed by the fact that theirs is a voluntary
sex-love relationship.

The social revolution which Engels believed was about to happen would eliminate class differences, and
therefore also the need for prostitution and the enslavement of women. If men needed only to be concerned
with sex-love and no longer with property and inheritance, then monogamy would come naturally.

Footnotes
1. Tatiana Andrushchenko, Prefatory note to The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State: In the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
Collected Works: Volume 26: Frederick Engels, 1882-89. New York: International
Publishers, 1990; pg. 130.
2. Andruschenko, "Prefatory note" in Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 26, pg. 640.
3. Frederick Engels, "Author's Preface to the First Edition", in The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State. Ernest Untermann, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1902; pg.
9.
4. Frederick Engels in London to Karl Kautsky in Zurich, April 26, 1884, in Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, Collected Works: Volume 47: Engels, 1883-86. New York: International
Publishers, 1995; pp. 131-132.
5. Engels to Kautsky, April 26, 1884, pg. 132.
6. Frederick Engels in London to Eduard Bernstein in Zurich, May 22, 1884, in Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, Collected Works: Volume 47: Engels, 1883-86. New York: International
Publishers, 1995; pp. 136-137.
7. Malinowski, B. 1956. Marriage: Past and Present. A debate between Robert Briffault and
Bronislaw Malinowski, ed. M. F. Ashley Montagu. Boston: Porter Sargent.
8. Harris, M. 1969. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. London: Routledge, p. 305.
9. Leacock, E. B. 1981. Myths of Male Dominance. Collected articles on women cross-
culturally. New York: Monthly Review Press.
10. Hrdy, S. B. 2009. Mothers and others. The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding.
London and Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
11. Knight, C. 2008. Early human kinship was matrilineal. (http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.
org/old/class_text_105.pdf) In N. J. Allen, H. Callan, R. Dunbar and W. James (eds.), Early
Human Kinship. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 61-82.
12. Opie, K. and C. Power, 2009. Grandmothering and Female Coalitions. A basis for matrilineal
priority? In N. J. Allen, H. Callan, R. Dunbar and W. James (eds.), Early Human Kinship.
Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 168-186.
13. Chris Knight, 2012. Engels was Right: Early Human Kinship was Matriliineal. (http://libcom.o
rg/history/engels-was-right-early-human-kinship-was-matrilineal) .

External links
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. (https://archive.org/details/originoffa
milypr00enge) Ernest Untermann, trans. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1909. —Identical to
1st English language edition.
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. (https://archive.org/details/originoffa
milypr00fred) Alternate translation. New York: International Publishers, n.d. [c. 1933].
German language html version. (http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me21/me21_025.htm)
Soviet study booklet (https://archive.org/details/AndreyevOriginFamilyPropertyState)

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